There is often a need for a low friction bearing support for a heavy structure to be moved along a linear path. There has heretofore been developed various linear way bearings such as recirculating roller bearings interposed between flat surfaces.
Such bearings, while providing precision guided motion, are relatively costly and generate significant friction. Similarly, there has been provided recirculated ball bearings guided on shafts, but shaft bearings cannot resist turning forces such as are exerted by a cantilevered structure. Where a structure is to be moved manually, such as production tools or other equipment manipulated by production line workers, significant friction is a disadvantage because of the manual effort required to overcome the friction, particularly where repetitive motions are required.
There has also heretofore been developed extremely low friction air bearings for guided movement which are particularly suited to applications in which manual effort is to be minimized, but require a filtered air supply and again such air bearings are relatively costly and not well suited to the rugged environment of production operations.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a rugged, but very low friction guideway arrangement which can be fabricated at relatively low cost.